中美文化差异小论文中英.doc

;The differences between Anerican and China in education and valueBy Dinglan(15070121)Abstract:Key words:Values are the core in the intercultural communication. Values are intangible. People speak of the same values in marriage but seldom express what their values are. The word value comes fromtheLatin valere, which means “to be worth”. Values tell us what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is false and how we will behave and evaluate behavior. Values are taught at home, often unconsciously, and reinforced by society. So we can say that values are generally culturally determined. When values are once formed, they will instruct people behaviors, attitude, and faith. People of different cultures, while having he same fundamental needs, like eating and sleeping, may have not only quite different wants like social and psychological but also quite different ways of perceiving their needs. Bothare convinced of the rightness of their ways, because they are behaving instinctively, naturally and properly according to their cultural logic. There is a potential for conflict because what is natural for one is not always natural for the other. Their divergence is further complicated by the fact that many of their behavior patterns are based on unconscious values and cultural assumptions about how life should be lived2.1.1 Differences in Cultural Patterns Culture is a critical issue in intercultural communication. We have to do the cultural comparison when we are engaging in the intercultural communication study. Chinese culture is a typical Eastern culture. There are various definitions on culture both at home and abroad. Larry, Richard, and Lisa in their book Communication between Cultures give their definition: “We define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving” (Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, and Lisa A Stefani. 2000). In the book of Introducing Cultural Studies, Baldwin and the coauthors present their definition on culture: “Outside the natural sciences, the term culture is chiefly used in three relatively distinct senses to refer to: the arts and artistic activity; the learned, primarily symbolic features of a particular way of life; and a process of development” (Elaine Baldwin, Brian Longhurst, Greg Smith, Scott Mccracken, and Miles Ogborn. 2005). Cultures are extremely complex and consist of numerous interrelated cultural orientations, including values, knowledge, experience, attitudes, norms, and material aspects. Cultural patterns are a term that helps us to talk about these orientations collectively. It helps us to understand a society culture on the whole and enables us to make comparisions between different cultures. People in different parts of the world, especially those in the East and those in the West do differ profoundly in their cultural patterns because they have different culture, social customs, economy, language, geography, etc. 2.1.1.1 Individualism versus Collectivism Individualism is the most important value orientation in the West. Broadly speaking, individualism refers to the doctrine, spelled out in detail by the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, that each individual is unique, special, completely different from all other individuals, and the basic unit of nature. American people advocate individualism, they believe that everyone is unique; they have the right to pursuit freedom and happniess. In a group, American people will pay great attention to the spirit of teamwork, but they still need to maintain themselves as a separate individual and at the same time contain other peoples differences. Love is a kind of extremely romantic thing, American people have the courage to pursuit their own happniess but they will not give up their own independent personality and other pursuits just because of love. Marriage is usually referring to two person, husband and wife, and has nothing to do with other people like their relatives and friends. American people will not give up the independence of love for a certain group, such as a family. Collectivism is characterized by a social framework that